Life Inspired by God

Let’s face it, Ash Wednesday is the sort of thing that can give
Christianity a bad name. Folk see us with ashes on our fore-
heads, and they may think that we are quite strange. The 19th- century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche certainly saw us this way. He hated Christianity. He called our faith that “gruesome way of dying.”

Although I disagree that it is gruesome, Nietzsche was right to see our faith as a way of dying. (After all, the cross is the symbol of our faith.) I think of this as being realistic, for no understanding of life that fails to take into account that we shall all die is worth its salt.

Reality is preferable to illusion. But we live in a death-denying culture in which we are encouraged to act as if we will live forever. Ash Wednesday points us to the truth: Death is real.

Here is the dilemma: If we are all terminally immersed in death, how can we find the life that, in the apostle Paul’s words, “really is life”? Of course, the short answer is that we can’t. This is not, however, the end of the story. The good news is that what we cannot possibly achieve on our own God is pleased to give us through His son Jesus Christ. This is what we mean when we talk about the grace of God.
The Lenten journey helps us to grasp this complex and mysterious reality. We begin by acknowledging the truth of our mortality. From there we walk with Christ up the holy mountain to Jerusalem, where, with Him, we experience both the horror of the crucifixion and the glory that is the resurrection.

On this journey we discover that only a Christ-shaped life can be resurrected. Yes, eternal life is a gift from God; but it is a gift that must be received, accepted, acted upon. No less a figure than Paul, the great prophet of grace, warns the Corinthians — and perhaps us? — do not accept the grace of God in vain. By this he means that we are to allow our lives to be reshaped in ways that reflect the life of Christ.

Paul also echoes the prophet Joel, telling us, now is the acceptable time to hear and respond to God’s call in our lives. So on Ash Wednesday we remember that we have been formed out of the dust of the earth. We are mortal. Dust we were, and dust we will become. We are alive only as God breathes into us the breath of life. During Lent ponder the deep meaning of this. Live inspired by God! Respond to God’s Word! Walk in the way of Christ!
Now is the acceptable time.